American Girl: Addy Walker (February 2015)

I had a hard time picking a girl for February until one of my favorite patrons requested that I do Addy Walker for February. I knew immediately that I wanted the kids to make their own play-dough cherry pie as Addy had cherry pie for her birthday. I woke up at 6am on Saturday and made several batches of homemade play-dough. I found this super easy recipe. I do recommend that you add the salt directly to the hot water. It made the play-dough less grainy. I made several batches for the “dough” and a smaller batch for the “cherries.” Once the girls arrived for the actual program, I did my Addy Walker powerpoint. I talked briefly about what plantation Addy’s lived on (the author created Addy’s character based on the Stagville Plantation, how she picked her birthday, her chores, and where she escaped to with her mother. I then talked about how Addy had cherry pie for birthday and how she might have played with a Thaumatrope. Our first task was for the girls to make their own cherry pie out of the play-dough. I bought a several muffin tins. I specifically choose the tins that came six to one tin. I wanted a size that the girls could easily manage and that would be size appropriate for their dolls. These are super easy to cut. You just have to make sure to fold the down tin so there are no sharp edges. We lined out tins with the dough, rolled the cherries, and then made the topping. Plastic knives work great to make the strips.

Some of the girls made designs. Unfortunately, I was running around and was unable to get pictures. After our cherry pies, we went on to make our own thaumatropes. I found my instructions in Martha’s Stewart’s Favorite Crafts for Kids. I had a few examples of thaumatropes on my powerpoint. I showed two youtube videos. One of them was of vintage thaumatropes and the other was of new thaumatropes. Beware that many kids will copy the examples. However many of them of turned out great. Here is one example:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKmTmGRN7EA